


Flying High

by chiiyo86



Category: Killjoys (TV)
Genre: Banter, Friendship, Gen, Hallucinogens, Season 1, Warrant job
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-10 15:28:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12302058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: Even the simplest job can go awry. Johnny wasnotexpecting the pigs and the illegal hallucinogenic plants.





	Flying High

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luckydip](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckydip/gifts).



> I tried for something more Halloween-themed at first, but ended up writing something silly and fun (hopefully) instead. This is taking place at some nebulous point in season 1 - although you said you would be caught up by the time the collection opened, I didn't know whether you would like the later developments and didn't want to risk it. Hope you enjoy the fic!

Johnny thought he might have made a mistake in his handling of the pigs.

“No, you _think_?” D’avin hissed when Johnny voiced that thought out loud. He was crouched next to Johnny, behind a copse of bushes that hid them from view. “What got into you, anyway? You know you’ve never had the right touch with pigs. They always had it for you, back home.”

“What? I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Animals love me. Now, you, on the other hand…”

“Boys, this is _not_ the moment to be bickering,” Dutch said in a whisper from Johnny’s other side. Then she glanced at Johnny, lifting an eyebrow. “But pigs, really? I must get that story later.”

“No one is getting any story later,” Johnny said, shooting a warning look at Dutch, then at his brother, the smirking bastard. “Can you still hear them? I can’t hear them anymore.”

All three of them held their breaths for a moment, an ear out for the sound of a herd of angry pigs trampling about, but the forest around the farm was now eerily silent. 

“And still no sign of him,” Dutch said as her eyes scanned their surroundings for movement. “Where _is_ that kid?”

The kid in question was twenty-two years old Micah Thoms, a small time farmer on Leith and the target of an Apprehension Warrant. Even though his life description made him sound like someone of no consequence, he had somehow managed to catch the attention of the daughter of a minor Qreshi family. A young woman in her mid-twenties, Henna Conner was slim and dark-skinned and bearing the cool arrogance of a Qreshi, albeit without the confidence in her all-powerfulness that Johnny had noticed in members of the Nine. She had been adamant that they shouldn’t hurt their target, but had also refused to tell them what she wanted to do with him. Johnny, Dutch and D’avin had found Thoms’ farm in a secluded area on Leith, but so far they hadn’t caught sight of the young man himself. Theorizing that he must be keeping an eye on his pigs one way or another, Johnny had thought that freeing the heinous beats from their pen would be a good way to draw him out. But their target remained elusive, and Johnny had to admit that when the pigs had charged at him, hatred in their black beady eyes, he had been questioning his own judgement for a minute.

“What’s that over there?” D’avin asked.

Johnny squinted in the direction that his brother pointed at with his finger. There, half-hidden in a mess of brambles and trees, was what looked like a small shack, its wooden walls covered in enough moss that it was camouflaged among the rest of the greenery. 

“Do you think he might be hiding inside this thing?” Johnny asked doubtfully.

“We’ve looked everywhere else,” Dutch said, “so we might as well see what’s in there.”

She was up to her feet before either of her partners could voice any objection. From the look on her face, Johnny could tell that she was already fed up with this assignment; if Micah Thompson was hiding in that shack, she was going to bring the whole thing down on his head. 

The three of them made their way up to the shack, crouching low among the vegetation. They’d already searched the main house and found it empty, but who knew what kind of surveillance device Micah Thompson might have installed for when he couldn’t keep an eye on his farm himself. Up close, the shack looked all but abandoned and like it would crumble if they breathed too hard at it, but when Dutch tried to open the door it wasn’t as easy as expected. 

“It’s locked. Interesting,” she commented and started working more seriously at forcing her entrance.

The inside of the shack came as a surprise to Johnny. For a start, it was a lot bigger than he had assumed when looking at it from the outside; the bulk of the building had presumably been hidden on purpose into the forest around it. Also, it was neither abandoned nor empty: rows of plant pots were lined on the floor, with only one narrow central alley left for someone to walk among them. Over each of the pots a small lamp was suspended, and the combination of all those lamps gave enough diffuse light that even though there was no window, they could see very clearly the plants’ large leaves, dark green in the middle and edged with purple.

“What’re those plants?” D’avin asked. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“We don’t have them on Telen,” Johnny said. “Or anywhere else on the J as far as I know. They’re native to Qresh. When smoked, they’re a powerful hallucinogenic. Super popular among Qresh nobility for fun times, but super illegal on Leith. Leithians are way too stuck up for drugs. Do you think that’s why—”

A sound coming from outside shut him up, and concertedly they framed the entrance of the shack, all guns out. When the door opened, they pointed their weapons at a lanky young man whose red hair was tousled like he’d just woken up from a nap in the forest. There were dead leaves in his hair, lending weight to that theory, but he also had a rifle in his hands.

“Who are you?” he yelled at them, his eyes wide with fear but his nostrils flaring from anger. “What’re you doing here?”

“Reclamation agents,” Dutch said in a clipped, formal voice. “Are you Micah Thoms?” she asked, even though he looked just like the picture they had of him. “There’s a Level III warrant on you. You have to come with us, and, friendly advice, I suggest you don’t make a fuss.”

“What? No!” Thoms whirled his rifle at Dutch. “I—I’ll shoot at you.”

This made Johnny and D’avin react immediately. “Wow, wow,” Johnny said. “Calm down, kid. This is a Live Warrant; we’re not supposed to hurt you.”

“But if you hurt our partner—” D’avin added, letting the end of the sentence trail off meaningfully. 

“I—I—” 

Thoms turned his weapon toward Johnny, then D’avin, and then at Dutch again. Johnny noticed with worry the way he handled the rifle, like he didn’t know how to use it very well. A panicked person using a weapon they were unfamiliar with was a clear recipe for disaster.

“Put down the rifle,” Johnny said in his most soothing voice, the one that obviously didn’t do it for pigs, but worked wonders on the majority of human beings. “Again, we’re not here to hurt you. You need—”

It probably would have calmed Thoms down, but at that moment a crash was heard from the outside and it made Thoms yelp and startle. His finger clenched on the trigger of his rifle and the shot fired wildly. Fortunately it missed Johnny and his crew, but the bullet damaged a few of the lamps on its way and one of them fizzled with a spark. Next thing Johnny knew, a whirl of smoke was rising from the plant under that lamp, and Johnny remembered then how flammable it was and why this was bad news.

Dutch was already covering her nose and mouth, as was Micah Thoms, but D’avin didn’t know the plant and didn’t have the same reflex.

“Don’t inhale the smoke!” Johnny shouted urgently at his brother. “Cover your mouth!”

But by the time he’d issued his warning he’d breathed some of the smoke himself. He smacked a hand on his face, but already he felt dizzy and the floor was pitching violently under his feet. 

“Johnny? D’avin?” It was Dutch’s voice, but she sounded like she was talking from the other end of a very long tunnel. “Shit!”

The room looked a lot wider all of a sudden and Johnny could feel it tremble around him. A ship? Were they inside a ship? How had they gotten there?

“Lucy?” he called, even though the ship didn’t look like Lucy at all. “Lucy, where are we?”

“Johnny?” 

This was Dutch again, and suddenly Dutch was looming over him and Johnny realized he was sitting down. Dutch’s face looked larger than usual and her skin was glowing like burnished gold. Johnny reached out, wondering if her skin would burn to the touch. She slapped his hand away irritably.

“Johnny,” she said. “It’s going to be all right. Can you hear me? You’ll be fine, you just have to ride it out. I’m going to take care of D’avin, okay? Just sit tight.”

“D’avin?” Where was his brother? What was wrong with him? “D’av? D’av? Where are you?”

He tried to stand up but a strong hand shoved him back down. “Sit,” Dutch said in an authoritative voice. “D’av is fine. I’ve got him.”

There was no other choice but to obey that voice. From very far away, Johnny heard the sound of his brother’s laughter. He wasn’t sure what was funny about being on board an unknown ship, but to hear it made him feel better. Something was dripping on his face and he frowned, licking his upper lip for a taste of it. It tasted like staled water. Was it raining? Maybe they were outside after all, because when he looked again he saw that he was surrounded with leaves the size of a small child. The leaves were twirling, almost dancing, and Johnny curled up tighter on himself, afraid of what would happen if they touched him. 

He could still hear Dutch and he clung to her voice as an anchor. “Move an inch and I’ll skewer you myself!” she was saying.

Another voice answered her, but it sounded like a squealing pig and Johnny couldn’t make out the words. It was still raining. Brightly colored birds of the kind Johnny had never seen were chirping among the huge leaves. One of the leaves snatched a bird and ate it, but Johnny wasn’t too worried because the leaves seemed to have stopped paying attention to him. Besides, Dutch wouldn’t let him get eaten. 

More time passed, but Johnny couldn’t make sense of it. It felt both very long and very short. Sometimes their surroundings changed suddenly and he couldn’t tell if they had moved or if the world had simply gone mad. D’avin came back at some point and they clutched each other until, eventually, Johnny blinked and found himself sitting on a couch in a normal looking room, with normal sunlight flowing through the windows. D’avin was slumped against him, groaning, while Dutch stood by a table, next to where Micah Thoms was sitting. She was holding her weapon oh-so-casually down, but Thoms kept shooting her nervous little glances so she must have warned him not to mistake casualness for carelessness. Johnny’s head was pounding like his heart had relocated inside his skull, but Dutch smiled at him.

“Hey,” she said. “Welcome back, you two. How’re you feeling?”

Johnny’s mouth tasted like he had licked the whole length of one of Old Town’s streets. “I feel wonderful,” he said. “Just what the doctor ordered.” His face felt damp and he frowned. “Why am I wet?”

“The shack had a fire sprinkler,” Dutch said.

“Ah, makes sense. D’av, what’s your status?”

D’avin winced at the sound of Johnny’s voice, and, selfishly, Johnny felt a little better for having a companion in his misery. 

“Is this what the Qreshi do for fun?” D’avin said in a low, gravelly voice, rubbing his face. “Those people are nuts.”

“They’re used to it, I guess,” Dutch said. 

“Or they’ve interbred so much that their brains have shrunk,” D’avin mumbled.

“An equally plausible thesis,” Johnny said.

Gingerly, he unglued himself from his brother and hauled himself up to his feet. The room spun around him but he managed to keep his balance. The day was looking up, he thought with satisfaction.

“So,” he said, taking a cautious step toward Dutch and Micah Thoms. When he didn’t pitch forward he took another step, feeling more confident about his ability to stay upright. “Is this why Henna Conner wants to get her hands on you so bad? Did you cheat her in a drug deal or what?”

Thoms blinked and then sprang forward as though to stand up. “What—”

“Nuh-huh,” Dutch said, her gun immediately pointed at him. “Remember what I said about being a good boy?”

Thoms sat back down, holding his palms out. “Sorry,” he said meekly. “I’m sorry, but what name did you just say?”

“Henna Conner,” Johnny repeated after sharing a puzzled look with D’avin. _What’s the deal with that kid?_ “She’s the one who issued the warrant. She wants you dragged to Qresh, but apparently she’s not mad enough to want you dead. Unless you got something she wants. Not that it’s any of our business.”

“Henna,” Thoms said softly, and his lips stretched into a smile. “Henna wants me on Qresh. I didn’t think—I didn’t think she cared.”

Johnny exchanged another round of puzzled looks with both D’avin and Dutch. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You don’t mean that Henna Conner—”

“—is actually you _girlfriend?_ ” D’avin finished for him.

“Oh, well.” Thoms’s freckled face turned bright red. “I thought I was just a fling to her. You know, she’s a Qreshi, I’m a Leithian, my family has never had any land on Qresh. I—I wanted to get rich enough—”

“By selling _drugs_ ,” D’avin said. 

“—before I contacted her again,” Thoms said like he hadn’t heard the comment. “I wanted to be worthy of her. Not Qreshi level, but as good as I could be.”

“That’s adorable,” Dutch said icily, her gun still locked on the young man. “I suppose you won’t object to going to Qresh with us, then?”

Thoms was more than eager to go to Qresh with them, but his apparent willingness didn’t make Dutch any less wary and she still escorted him to Lucy at gun point. Not that the young man seemed to mind anymore; there was even a light saunter to his steps. 

“Well, I sure hope for him that Henna Conner actually wants him back to pursue romance,” Johnny whispered to his brother as they followed their partner and their warrant target. “And not because she wants to hang him by his balls herself for pulling a disappearing act on her. Never anger a Qreshi. Revenge is a sport, there.”

“Ugh, rich people’s romance,” D’avin said. “Crazy stuff.”

A series of noises like heavy trampling tearing through the woods made them both jump and whirl around. A veil of trees was hiding them from view, but it sounded like the pigs were still joyously galloping through the forest.

“Not scared of the pigs, are you, Johnny?” D’avin said, his eyes crinkling at the corner. 

“Oh, shut it,” Johnny replied, giving his brother a shove. “And not a word to Dutch about that old story, you hear me?”

“Dutch hears all,” Dutch said loudly from a little ahead of them. “Once we’re rid of lover boy here, I want to know everything about it.”

 _I hate you_ , Johnny mouthed to D’avin and then quickened his pace, in a hurry to be off Leith and back to Westerley. Old polluted, built-up Westerley, where there were no pigs and no hallucinogenic plants.


End file.
